Special Report
– China co-opts Buddhist sect in drive to discredit Dalai
Lama
By
Reuters Staff December 23, 2015
Thousands
of Buddhists from all over Britain packed into the Aldershot
football stadium southwest of London on June 29, quietly waiting
under a hot sun to see the Dalai Lama.
Just
outside the turnstiles, another group of Buddhists awaited the
Tibetan spiritual leader.
“False
Dalai Lama, stop lying, false Dalai Lama, stop lying!” they chanted
over and over through megaphones, drummers pounding out a rhythmic
tempo. When he spoke, only snippets of his remarks could be heard
above the cacophony.
“China
must be thrilled at this,” said Gary Beesley, a British devotee of
Tibetan Buddhism who had travelled from Manchester to hear the
Dalai Lama. “They really must love it.”
The
Aldershot demonstration was part of a pattern: Noisy protesters are
following the globetrotting Dalai Lama almost everywhere he goes,
denouncing him in terms that echo the invective heaped upon the
Nobel Peace laureate by China’s ruling Communist Party.
On the
surface, the commotion appears to stem from an arcane,
centuries-old schism in Tibetan Buddhism. But a Reuters
investigation has found that the religious sect behind the protests
has the backing of the Communist Party. The group has emerged as an
instrument in Beijing’s long campaign to undermine support for the
Dalai Lama, a political exile who commands the loyalty of millions
of Chinese citizens and whom Beijing accuses of plotting secession
for Tibet.
The
protesters are members of a sect that worships Dorje Shugden, a
deity its devotees revere as a protector. The Dalai Lama
discourages the practice, advising his followers that Dorje Shugden
is a malevolent spirit. The Shugden worshippers accuse the Tibetan
spiritual leader of persecuting them for their beliefs.
This
quarrel was once confined to the temples and monasteries of the
remote Tibetan plateau and exile communities in India. But it has
now been exported to the streets and stadiums of North America,
Europe and Australia.
Tibetan
and foreign protesters say the demonstrations are organised by an
umbrella group called the International Shugden Community, which in
the United States is registered as a charity in California. Members
of this group say they are fighting purely for religious freedom
and deny China plays a role in the demonstrations.
“There
is no connection at all between Dorje Shugden and the Communist
Party,” said Nicholas Pitts, a Hong Kong-based spokesman for the
International Shugden Community who frequently appears at its
protests.
But a
leaked internal Communist Party document shows that China is
intervening in the dispute. The party document, issued to officials
last year, said the Shugden issue is “an important front in our
struggle with the Dalai clique”.
A monk
and prominent former member of the Shugden movement who was based
in India and Nepal, Lama Tseta, told Reuters that China paid him
and others to plan and coordinate the activities of the sect’s
followers overseas. Tseta said officials from the Communist Party’s
powerful political special-operations unit, the United Front Work
Department, control the effort and allocate funding. These
officials direct the protests through senior Shugden monks in China
and the Tibetan exile community in India and the West, who are the
spiritual leaders of the sect, he said.
“The
Chinese are using them as a tool to make the Dalai Lama look fake,
to achieve their own ends, to undermine Tibetan Buddhism and to
fragment Tibetan society,” Tseta said in an interview.
These
senior Shugden monks are treated as honoured guests at official
functions in China and publicly embraced as patriotic allies in
Beijing’s campaign to crush support for the Dalai Lama, according
to eyewitness accounts, reports in China’s state controlled media
and postings on Dorje Shugden websites.
A core
group of ethnic Tibetans living abroad who follow these senior
monks spearhead the demonstrations. They travel the world to
harangue the Dalai Lama. Some attend government functions in China,
and have contact with Chinese diplomats at Beijing’s embassies and
consulates. But they deny that China plays any role in the
protests. They say they are purely demonstrating for religious
freedom and pay their own way.
“SERIOUS
POTENTIAL THREAT”
The
majority of protesters, though, are foreign recruits like Pitts,
mostly Westerners. Lama Tseta said Chinese officials had instructed
senior Shugden monks to enlist these foreigners in the
demonstrations. Reuters has no independent evidence of direct
Chinese financing of the protests. But a senior Indian Interior
Ministry official said Indian authorities are aware that the
Shugden sect receives funds from China.
“We
also keep a close watch on them because they get funding from China
via Nepal,” said the official, who supervises the activities of
India’s internal security agency, the Intelligence Bureau, and
spoke on condition of anonymity.
In
response to questions from Reuters about the Communist Party’s
support for the Shugden sect, the Chinese foreign ministry said the
Dalai Lama was practicing “religious tyranny.”
“The
14th Dalai Lama has in recent years used all sorts of means,
including violent terror methods, to force certain people to
abandon their religious belief,” the ministry said.
The
office of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, said the Tibetan
spiritual leader was occupied with teaching in Southern India and
was unable to answer questions for this article.
How
much the campaign will tarnish the Dalai Lama is unclear, but the
Shugden protesters are having an impact. Coverage of the Dalai
Lama’s visits in the United States, Europe and Australia now
regularly includes accusations from Shugden spokespeople that he is
a religious bigot with no right to speak for Tibet. The protests
have become so strident that the Tibetan spiritual leader has been
alerted by U.S., Indian and other intelligence agencies that there
is “now a serious potential threat to the Dalai Lama’s well-being,”
according to a briefing document reviewed by Reuters.
That
assessment is contained in the 18-page briefing prepared for the
Dalai Lama’s official representative in the United Kingdom, the
Office of Tibet, ahead of the Tibetan religious leader’s two trips
to Britain this year. The document, which was provided to the
British Foreign Office, also reported that the U.S., Dutch and
Swiss governments had tightened security during the Dalai Lama’s
recent visits. The memo makes no allegations of a Chinese
government role in the security threat.
A
former U.S. official said the State Department’s Bureau of
Diplomatic Security was aware of the Dorje Shugden group and had to
pay particular attention to it.
“There’s
a lot of passion around this from Shugden practitioners, and the
Chinese have fostered this Shugden worship as a way to split
Tibetans,” said Kelley Currie, a senior State Department advisor on
Asia and Tibet from 2007 to 2009. Currie previously worked for the
International Campaign for Tibet, an advocacy group promoting human
rights for Tibetans.
A State
Department spokesperson said the bureau provided protection for the
Dalai Lama during his visits to the United States but declined to
discuss operational details.
China’s
effort to neutralise the Dalai Lama is part of a systematic and
often secretive global campaign to silence criticism abroad and
bring the world around to its views.
A
Reuters investigation this year exposed how China has used front
men to set up a covert international radio network that is
broadcasting pro-Beijing news. A second article revealed how China
is using government-backed groups masquerading as NGOs to
intimidate its critics at the United Nations Human Rights
Council.
In the
case of the Dalai Lama, Beijing hasn’t just co-opted a Buddhist
group to challenge the Tibetan spiritual leader. It has also used
the country’s economic and diplomatic clout with Western
governments to marginalise its Tibetan foe.
Some
Western capitals are acquiescing. British Prime Minister David
Cameron, former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Norwegian
Prime Minister Erna Solberg are among the world leaders who have
chosen not to meet with the Dalai Lama in the past year and a
half.
Abbott
and Solberg did not respond to questions from Reuters.
TAILED
IN LONDON
Beijing’s
strategy has been especially effective in the United Kingdom.
Britain, unlike other Western governments, doesn’t provide the
Tibetan leader with official security during his visits. Ahead of
the Dalai Lama’s two tours this year, his organizers officially
requested protection because of fears for his safety, as laid out
in the 18-page memo.
The
Cameron government refused the request, according to visit
organizers.
At the
end of the Dalai Lama’s second trip, protesters pursued him through
the streets of London on his way out of the country.
As he
left his central London hotel on September 21, members of his
entourage say they spotted a car that appeared to be tailing the
motorcade. Wangdue Tsering, first secretary at the Office of Tibet
in London, was in one of the vehicles behind the Dalai Lama. “We
noticed the car turned out very quickly and ran through a red
light,” he said. “From that point we suspected it was following
us.”
Tsering
said the Dalai Lama’s security team called the police. Within 10
minutes a patrol car pulled the pursuing vehicle over. Tsering said
the Tibetan security team recognised one of the two people in the
car as a Shugden protester. “We know who he is,” Tsering
said.
A
London police spokesman said the department had no record of the
incident.
Asked
why the government had declined to provide security for the Dalai
Lama, Tim Loughton, a pro-Tibet member of parliament in Cameron’s
ruling Conservative Party, said: “I don’t know, other than
kowtowing to the Chinese.”
Britain’s
Home Office said it did not comment on security matters.
“We
regard the Dalai Lama as an important religious figure, and he has
been welcomed to the U.K. on many occasions,” Cameron’s office said
in response to questions from Reuters. “We are robust and
consistent in raising human rights issues with the Chinese
authorities.”
A month
after the Dalai Lama’s U.K. tour in September, Cameron rolled out
the red carpet for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first state visit
to the country. Britain secured contracts with China worth almost
40 billion pounds ($60 billion) during the trip, according to the
U.K. government.
THREE
EYES AND A SWORD
More
than five decades ago, the Dalai Lama fled into exile in India
following a failed uprising against Chinese rule. Today, the
80-year-old religious leader retains a powerful influence over more
than six million ethnic Tibetans within China’s borders. He travels
the world promoting a message of greater autonomy for
Tibetans.
Beijing
accuses him of attempting to split Tibet from China. Now, the
avowedly atheist Communist Party has thrown its weight behind the
worship of Dorje Shugden – a spirit depicted in temples and
monasteries as a wrathful three-eyed figure wielding a sword and
mounted on a lion.
China’s
ultimate objective is to entrench its authority over a vast,
resource-rich and strategically vital region that still chafes
under Communist rule. More than 140 Tibetans have self-immolated
since early 2009.
Some of
the Dalai Lama’s leading supporters say his global standing remains
intact. He still draws large crowds. In February, U.S. President
Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama attended a prayer breakfast in
Washington, where the president praised the Tibetan as a “good
friend.”
“It’s
unfortunate, but they are not sophisticated things they are doing,”
said actor Richard Gere, chairman of the International Campaign for
Tibet, which is based in Washington and is sympathetic to the Dalai
Lama. “It’s childish denouncing – very much the way the Chinese
denounce His Holiness.”
Beijing’s
strategy on Shugden worship is contained in an internal Communist
Party document setting out guidelines for officials in Tibet on how
to deal with the dispute. The document, issued on February 20 last
year by the Communist Party Committee of the Tibet Autonomous
Region, was leaked this year to the International Campaign for
Tibet.
Officials,
the directive said, should avoid publicizing the dispute over
Shugden worship. But they should recognise that the Dalai Lama camp
is using the schism as a pretext to split the motherland and sow
discord. The party must “decisively grind into dust” this plot, the
document added.
Chinese
officials should organise community visits by respected, patriotic
religious leaders to expose and denounce the Dalai Lama’s “ban” on
Shugden worship, the document said. And supporters of the Dalai
Lama’s views on Shugden who attempted to “create disturbances”
around the issue in China “must be punished according to the
law.”
“I do
not feel you could fairly use this document to say, look, this is
evidence that the Chinese government is supporting the Shugden
issue,” said Nicholas Pitts, the Hong Kong-based spokesman of the
International Shugden Community. He pointed to a section of the
document where authorities were urged to punish anyone, believer or
non-believer, who used the Shugden issue to cause “public
gatherings and disturbances.”
LAMA
TSETA’S ALLEGATIONS
Two
authorities on Tibetan Buddhism who reviewed the document –
Columbia University’s Robert Barnett and Elliot Sperling of Indiana
University – said they believe it is genuine.
“It’s
not about Shugden, it’s about politics,” said Tseta, the former
Shugden member.
Tseta,
42, said he was a senior figure in the Shugden sect and was
responsible for dealing with Chinese officials between 1997 and
2006. He left the movement in 2008. He identified the Communist
Party’s United Front Work Department as the lead agency
coordinating Beijing’s efforts to undermine the Dalai Lama through
the Shugden movement in India and the West.
The
United Front is the powerful body charged with enlisting support
for the party from influential non-Communists at home and overseas.
Other Tibetan monks and scholars who study the dispute identify the
United Front as the key agency in China’s bid to cement control
over Tibet.
One of
the key United Front officials directing the Shugden movement’s
anti-Dalai Lama activities in recent years was Zhu Weiqun, Tseta
said.
Zhu,
68, a veteran official, was executive vice minister of the United
Front while Tseta was active in the Shugden movement. He is now
head of an ethnic and religious affairs body that advises China’s
parliament. Zhu is frequently quoted in the official media as a
leading government authority on Tibet, and mocks the Dalai Lama in
speeches and interviews. He holds a rank equivalent to a provincial
governor. Zhu did not respond to a Reuters request for an
interview.
Tseta
said he and other Shugden monks travelled on multiple occasions to
Nepal and China, including Tibet, where they met Zhu and other
Chinese officials. In the interview with Reuters, Tseta produced
two of his Chinese passports with stamps showing 15 visits to
China. Tseta said he was last in Tibet in 2006.
While
Zhu vilifies the Dalai Lama, he has heaped praise in the Chinese
media on another Tibetan monk: Lama Gangchen. Based in Milan,
Gangchen is the most influential Shugden leader outside China,
according to Tseta and Western scholars of Tibetan Buddhism. Tseta
showed Reuters photographs of himself with Gangchen.
“Gangchen
is the strongman of the Shugden movement,” said Thierry Dodin, a
French scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and director of the website
TibetInfoNet. “He’s the most committed one to the Communist Party
and the authorities in China.”
Tseta
said Gangchen organised the first meetings between Shugden leaders
in India and Chinese officials in 1997.
A VIP
MONK
Born in
1941, Gangchen studied at monastic universities before going into
exile in India in 1963, according to his personal website, Lama
Gangchen Peace Publications. He later moved to Europe and has
become an Italian citizen.
Gangchen
is a regular visitor to China, where he meets top leaders and is
feted at government-sanctioned religious gatherings. China’s
state-controlled media published photos of his arrival with other
Buddhist dignitaries at a forum in the city of Wuxi in October.
Indiana University’s Sperling and Tibet scholar Dibyesh Anand of
London’s Westminster University said they have both seen Gangchen
at government and United Front events in China, where he is treated
as a VIP.
A
spokeswoman for Gangchen said the monk declined to be interviewed
for this article. “Lama Gangchen has no role in the Shugden
movement,” she said. “He is merely a devoted practitioner of this
lineage.”
Tseta
said he began to have misgivings about his own role in the Shugden
movement, and by 2006, the Chinese were growing suspicious of him.
He was detained for 25 days in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, he said,
but was released after persuading authorities he was a devoted
Shugden monk. Reuters has no independent confirmation of Tseta’s
detention.
On a
trip to the U.S. later in 2006, he applied for asylum. Tseta showed
Reuters documents indicating he was granted political asylum in
2007. He said he is speaking out now about his role in the Shugden
movement because the protests against the Dalai Lama are dividing
Tibetans.
From
protest coverage, photographs, television news footage, online
video postings and Shugden publicity materials, Reuters was able to
identify leading ethnic Tibetans involved in demonstrations in
Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and
Europe.
Sonam
Rinchen is one of the most visible. Rinchen, 53, a stonemason
living in South Deerfield, Massachusetts, is a Tibetan spokesman
for the International Shugden Community, the group that leads the
protests.
He said
in a phone interview he had twice been questioned by Federal Bureau
of Investigation agents about security threats to the Dalai Lama,
most recently at his home in 2012 while the Dalai Lama was visiting
Boston. “They wanted to know if anybody paid by the Chinese wanted
to kill the Dalai Lama,” he said. These were “ridiculous”
allegations that the Central Tibetan Administration, the Tibetan
government in exile, had passed to the FBI to smear the Shugden
protesters, he said. The FBI declined to comment.
“IT
COSTS SO MUCH MONEY”
China
isn’t involved in the demonstrations, said Rinchen, who said he has
lived in the U.S. for almost three decades. “I am sure they are
pleased, but we do not protest to please China,” he said. “We are
interested in getting our religious freedom back.”
This
year, Rinchen joined the protests in Britain during the Dalai
Lama’s September visit. He said demonstrators paid their own
airfares and hotel bills, while the International Shugden Community
paid for local transport and meals.
“This
is the hard part of it,” he said. “It costs so much
money.”
Not for
everyone. In December 2014, the International Shugden Community
offered 40 free return flights from Manchester to Rome when the
Dalai Lama was scheduled to attend a meeting of Nobel laureates in
the Italian capital, according to a notice that was posted on the
group’s website. The offer included meals and accommodation for
protesters.
The
International Shugden Community was incorporated as a charity in
California in 2014, according to corporate records. It listed
assets of $27,471 and income of $69,235 in its 2014
filings.
The
majority of rank-and-file protesters are Westerners who follow the
New Kadampa Tradition, or NKT. Members say the group plays no role
in the protests. It doesn’t disclose how many devotees it has, but
former members estimate there are about 6,000 worldwide.
The
NKT’s leader and founder is Kelsang Gyatso, a Tibetan monk who
moved to Britain in 1977. The NKT, a registered U.K. charitable
trust, has 1,200 centres and branches in 40 countries, according to
its website. It had 21.8 million pounds on its books at the end of
2014, U.K. charity commission filings show.
NEGATIVE
PRESS
Carol
McQuire, a former member of the NKT in the U.K., said many of the
protesters are unwitting agents of Beijing. “I am sure that having
the protests done ‘for free’ by ignorant Westerners makes (the
Chinese) very content,” said McQuire, who became disillusioned and
left the movement nine years ago.
The
protests are attracting attention. On the Dalai Lama’s 2015 tour of
the United States, many media outlets (including Reuters) carried
reports covering the demonstrators and their grievances. During his
12-day visit to Australia in June, the Sydney Morning Herald and
Melbourne’s The Age published an opinion piece by the International
Shugden Community’s Pitts, who is also an NKT member.
“He has
been the political leader of the Tibetans for decades but, unlike
virtually every other political leader in the world, no one seems
to hold him to account or check whether what he says matches what
he does,” Pitts wrote.
On the
Dalai Lama’s September visit to Britain, the BBC and ITV covered
one of his engagements amid noisy Shugden protesters. Both outlets
interviewed Pitts.
ITV’s
report covering both sides – the Dalai Lama’s appearance and his
chanting critics – showed how the protests are chipping away at the
Tibetan spiritual leader’s image. “Here in the West, we are used to
seeing the Dalai Lama portrayed as a very popular, a very respected
figure,” said reporter Matthew Hudson. “But, this demonstration and
the entrenched animosity I’ve heard from both sides shows that in
our complex world of geopolitical and religious affairs, no one is
immune from criticism.”
Beijing
has applauded the shift. On the sidelines of China’s annual
parliamentary session in March, religious-affairs official Zhu
Weiqun said the international media was “less and less interested
in the Dalai Lama.”
Still,
because of his popular authority, the Dalai Lama’s disapproval of
the Shugden deity has sharply reduced the sect’s prevalence in
Tibetan areas of China and among Tibetan exiles in India,
Tibetologists say.
Some
Tibetan Shugden devotees complain that discrimination from Dalai
Lama supporters has seen them ostracized in Tibet and abroad. They
say they have been dismissed from jobs, refused service in shops
and forced to live in spiritual ghettos.
Some
Dalai Lama supporters acknowledge there have been cases of
discrimination. But they say it is not systematic and not
encouraged by the Dalai Lama.
AN
EYE-CATCHING BILLBOARD
When
the Shugden protests began in 1996, they were low key, sometimes
even respectful. Now they are vitriolic. At each stop, Shugden
protesters wait in ambush.
In the
past two years, protesters have penetrated the Dalai Lama’s
security cordon to confront him personally. In May last year,
Shugden Buddhists attempted to check in to the hotel where he was
staying in the Netherlands, according to the security briefing
provided to the British government. Hotel security staff ejected
them, visit organizers said.
Days
ahead of his two-day visit to New York starting July 9, a giant
billboard reading “False Dalai Lama Stop Lying” was posted two
blocks from where he was due to speak. An adjacent billboard
depicted the Dorje Shugden deity.
Both
were taken down on July 8 after Tibetans in the U.S. complained to
the advertising company, according to Dalai Lama supporters. The
company declined to disclose who paid for the
billboards.
The
Dalai Lama spoke to a sold-out crowd at Manhattan’s sprawling Jacob
K. Javits Convention Center. About 100 protesters gathered across
the street. Some held up a caricature of the Dalai Lama in military
boots, his eyes screwed up in fury and hands balled into fists,
standing on a pile of helpless Shugden monks.
The
same poster was on display outside the football stadium at
Aldershot in June, where Shugden protesters drowned out the Dalai
Lama’s 40-minute address.